Email Spam Blockers - Is There a Better Way ?
How to stop spam email is a problem that faces all Internet users and especially website owners. Finding an email spam blocker or using a spam filter service may help but is there a better way ?
I recently returned from a 3 week absence to find I had received almost 4,000 emails from the 50 or more email accounts that I have. Of those emails 70% were SPAM which from what I have read seems fairly typical.
There would probably be more if not for the spam filter service I use on each web hosting account. This 2nd line of defense does its best to act as an email spam blocker before the mail reaches me.
My 3rd line of defense, which is the most effective, is Mailwasher an email spam blocker software that I run that whilst it doesn't stop spam email, at least stops me from having to download it before I find out that it's a SPAM email.
My 4th line of defense is my email client (browser) on which I have set up some basic filters.
In case you're wondering what my 1st line of defense is to stop spam email, it's trying not to let my email addresses be captured by spam bots and email brokers. I know in the latter case I need to do better.
Of course it would be nice to be able to stop spam email before it ever gets to my mail box. It would also help if the whole system of email we currently all endure were redesigned. The email system we have today was created at a time when SPAM emails were largely unheard of.
As such the email system we all use is easily abused. For example many web hosts operate capture all email accounts. This means it doesn't matter what someone uses to send you an email.
Say they use wyscz@yourdomain.com, the web hosts email server at yourdomain.com will deliver it to you even though you have no such email address as wyscz. What the web host has done is shift the problem from them to you.
Have a good Christmas and a Happy New Year
Email Spam Blockers - Is There a Better Way - Continued
Then you have the fact that someone can spoof your email address and use it to send email that looks as though it comes from one of your email addresses at your domain. That has happened to one of my domains.
If that's not bad enough if the recipients email address is blocked or they use a spam filter service, you get all the delivery failed email messages returned to your inbox. After all they think the email came from your email address when in fact it didn't.
So you could end up getting your domain blacklisted as a source for spam email when you are completely innocent.
Then you have the fact that some web masters use website forms that without their knowledge get hijacked and used by spammers to send email that does come from their domain. This can quickly get your domain hosting account shut down.
It's also a fact that despite some web sites declaring that they never use a subscribers email address for rent or sale, some of them do exactly that, sell your email address to an email broker. A very high percentage of my spam comes from sources using my real email addresses that I have only ever given to legitimate web sites.
I am sure some of the people using email lists from brokers feel they are sending email to opt-in subscribers. Many of my spam emails include things like only sent to opt-in subscribers. Of course if you decide to opt-out you could be doing no more than telling them their mail has been delivered.
All too often the opt-out function doesn't work anyway. Does all this sound familiar ?
Then you have the bots that trawl the web for places to dump more spam, like leaving comments on blogs that serve no purpose other than waste your time deleting them and deleting the email notices you receive that a comment has been made.
If anyone has found a more effective email spam blocker or spam filter service that will stop spam email they could share it by leaving a useful comment. Please don't just leave a comment with a URL in the vain hope of getting a link to your site. It only wastes my time deleting them and wastes your time in writing them.
Perhaps during this Christmas holiday I can get more spam on my dinner plate and less in my email - surely there is a better way!